Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
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Tonight's reading gives us a tremendous deal of hope for our faith.
Our faith, as well as our church, is centered around the Resurrection. The Sadducees mean to attack that.
Jesus ends His answer to them by referencing Exodus. From the very title that God gives through the burning bush, we are given hope of the Resurrection. God is the God Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yet God is not the Lord of the dead, but the God of the living. This is God who created the heavens and the earth. God is Creator. From the beginning of Scripture, we have hope in what is to come.
Here is where we get into what Jesus first says to the Sadducees. In trying to trap Jesus on the issue of the Resurrection, the Sadducees reference a law on marriage. The law is that if a man dies without having any children, then his brother should marry his widow in order to produce an heir for his brother. The Sadducees try to point out how ridiculous this law becomes in the resurrection when the woman ends up having multiple, in this case seven, husbands.
Jesus, however, points at what is really ridiculous about this example. The Resurrected Life, He states, is not like this life at all. That should give us hope too.
Rejoice and be glad. The Resurrection, the cornerstone of our faith, is well preserved by Jesus, and it will be a transformative experience where all that is evil and wrong in this life will be gone and we can truly live life in the presence of our Lord and our God.